VRAF ANNOUNCES 2017 PROJECT GRANT RECIPIENT

VRAF News & Events, Monday, March 13, 2017

The Board of Directors of the Visual Resources Association Foundation (VRAF) is pleased to present the 2017 VRAF Project Grant in the amount of $3000 to Stephanie Norby, Director, Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access (SCLDA), Washington, DC.

The Smithsonian Institution has digitized more than 2 million of the objects and artifacts in its collections, and is a leader in management and 3D modeling of these collections. The Smithsonian Learning Lab (https://learninglab.si.edu/) is a new platform for accessing these digital resources, and includes tools for creating teaching collections using these resources. The SCLDA is working with both teachers and Smithsonian curators to create collections using the Learning Lab so that educators and their students can benefit and learn from the Smithsonian collections no matter where they live. The first Learning Lab projects involved collaborations with history and art teachers. The VRAF Project Grant will allow SCLDA to expand the Learning Lab to include digitized resources from the Smithsonian’s vast science collections. The grant will provide a stipend to a high school anthropology teacher, who will work during the summer of 2017 with a Smithsonian anthropology curator in order to create at least five vetted teaching collections that reflect both the strengths of the Smithsonian’s science collections and the pedagogical needs of secondary educators. This pilot project will also allow SCLDA to explore the process of creating science-based collections and to develop a series of best practices for the development of future digital science instructional resources. In accordance with its mission to support broad access to visual information, the VRAF is pleased to support a project that extends digitization and dissemination of visual culture into expanded fields of inquiry.

The VRAF Project Grant Program reflects the broad mission of the VRAF to advance knowledge in the field of visual resources and image management and to provide educational and training opportunities in support of broad access to visual information in the digital age.